The central question to personal productivity is “what should I do today?”

As a Senior Overthinker of Productivity, let me introduce to you a personal planning system that I have put a lot of thoughts into. It is working well for me. This should be applicable to knowledge workers who have multiple goals to achieve every week. I will start with what it is, then why it should be like that, then my experiments so far, and finally its limitations.

The system

It has 4 components:

  • a manually drawn 3x7 table, corresponding to 7 days of the week and 3 work periods in each day
  • a manually drawn mindmap of tasks to be done during the week, which I call the “tree of tasks”
  • a (pomodoro) timer
  • a memo space to quikcly dump random task reminders, such as Todoist, a small notebook, or a light-weight note-taking app.

You would run this system as follows. Every week, at any time on Saturday, Sunday, or Monday, spend 15 minutes to dump all the worries in your mind about the coming 7 days out and draw the tree of tasks. Remember, only dump things that need to and should be done during the next 7 days, not more. After that, spend 15-30 minutes to draw the 3x7 calendar. You write the dates corresponding to each day in the week, recall any important events that ring a bell in you during those days. Then, allocate the tasks on the tree to the cells in the table, taking into consideration your possible moods during those days and times. It’s okay to have empty cells – it will surely be filled later. But make sure all the tasks on the tree have been put somewhere on the calendar. Only put the tasks in with a square prepend to tick it later. No exact time is needed.

During the week, follow the calendar. If some tasks are boring, timeblock yourself using the timer. If some unexpected things come up, add it to the calendar (for urgent tasks) or to the memo space (for non-urgent tasks).

The Why’s

  • Why weekly span? Because it is short enough for me to know what needs to be done by the beginning of the period, while long enough so that I am satisfied about my planning horizon and stop worrying if I am missing something very important in the future. If something is not coming within a week and it is not constantly reminded to me, it is safe to say that I don’t need to start working on it this week. At the same time, my self-underestimating self usually forget what I have done during a week. I want to be nicer to myself by having a simple way to briefly record what I have done during the week. It is relieving to see that I have done something useful during the last 7 days; otherwise, I would feel really defeated.
  • Why the tree of tasks? Goal-setting, if done well, is very rewarding because (1) it gives me a sense of purpose to do things during the week so that I have motivation to work and (2) I can be more intentional about where I am heading in the vast space of things that I can do during a week. The tree, first and foremost, is simply a representation of those goals. What makes the tree slightly more effective than the others (like a multi-level text-based todo list or, a linear bullet list) is that it is easier for me to see the whole thing and check with my mind if I miss something. For example, my tree of tasks always have three main branches that read: Career, Relationships, and Self.
  • Why a calendar? Alternatives are usually a real-time todolist, which is a todo list that shows what’s left to be done. These can be further broken down in projects, and even dates. If it’s simply a project-based todo list, that is exactly the tree of tasks, so we don’t have two version of it. If it’s date-based todo list, then it is a list of deadlines. Seeing the deadlines is not very useful for daily and weekly planning. A computer cannot run if the programming gives it the deadlines of tasks to complete, because there is still a scheduling problem to be solved. The problem asks: given those deadlines, what is to be executed now. The result is a schedule. To be productive, a person would also need a concrete schedule that tells them what thing is to be done at what time. We see that a lot in common languages – “let’s set a side half a day to do X”, “what’s your plan for today?”, etc.
  • Why hand-written calendar instead of an online calendar? Because the time required to draw the calendar is negligible compared to the time put into actually doing the scheduling and planning. Furthermore, with a pen and a paper, you control everything. The calendar apps are currently too multi-purposed (such as reminders, invitations, fine-grained start and end time presentation), making their interfaces too cluttered for personal work. If I am free this afternoon, I shoudln’t have to decide that “programming the experiment X” should start at 2:15 PM and end at 4 PM. That causes paranoia when you don’t start on time or end on time, which is complete fine. The only thing to worry about is whether you have done your work today so that you are on track to complete the task by the deadline.
  • Why the calendar has only 3 cells, instead of hourly blocks? Similarly to the point above, such granularity is counter-productive. Three periods in the day are naturally sectioned by your lunch and dinner. Merging them will cause confusion (“should I do X now or in the evening?”), while splitting them further causes paranoia.

Some important tasks are unexciting. Image courtery at the bottom. Shared to me by Patrick Thoendel via his Facebook story.

  • Why Pomodoro? Many things in my work right now are actually boring. Grading, writing rebuttal, reviewing annotations, typing assignments for classes, doing class homework. But they need to be done anyway, otherwise punishments shall come. So, the only motivation for such things to me is that they only consume a finite amount of time, usually less than 1 hour for each task. While it is generally hard to start doing a boring task, it is easier to do so with a timer ticking right beside. It is a guarantee from God that, as long as I focus on the task for such a finite amount of time, I will be completely done with it.
  • Finally, why a memo space? Because random things will come up during the week that your tree of tasks does not have. It’s probably a feature of Life, not a bug. You can choose to either put the pop-up task (1) into the tree of tasks, (2) into the calendar, or (3) simply put in into a separate list and make sure you visit it weekly to incorporate them into the next week’s plan.

Results so far

I have tried this for only two weeks. But there are two main reasons why I want to keep doing it. First, it is backed up by all the reasonings above and all the understanding about my psychology at work. Second, I have simply been feeling good about running it so far. It is not time-consuming (30 minutes of planning every week + some revisits every day), but it helps me intentionally accomplish my goals. Look at the frequency and length of my recent blog posts as a proof for that. (I think I have still keep everything else in my life running, not shutting them down for blogging!)

Limitations

What could be the reasons for this system to fail?

  • Your life is already scheduled. This is usually true for highschool and college students, who schedules are dictated by classes. College students have some lee-way, so this might still be helpful. This recipe would work best for people who have a lot of freedom to do things and need a way to know when to do what.
  • You over-think it and add more features to it. More features mean more efforts to maintain. The more efforts, the harder it is to feel motivated to plan. For now, the motivation to plan is clear – you want to know what you should do next week. You can about that quesiton enough that you put yourself into planning. So let’s make the process of answering that question as easy as possible.
  • You are mentally too lazy to the point that there is no will to plan ahead. That would be a problem that no productivity system can solve, but maybe some time in nature, in the shower, in your restaurant, or with your loved ones, would help.

Acknowledgement: Thank you Đá for allowing me to spend time with you when I’m lazy.